The mystery behind the media bloggers association that defended Rogers Cadenhead of The Drudge Retort to AP is clearing. But if anything it shows AP in an even worse light than before. Wanting to be sure I had not overlooked something when writing yesterday about them, I visited the Media Bloggers Association site. Three things were quickly apparent, and explain why I'm not posting a link to the site.

1. The site offers legal advice to bloggers that join, but the proprietor says he is not a lawyer, and in various posts he ridicules those who say he claims to represent bloggers as a whole. Mmmm, very strange.

2. Roger Cox, the proprietor, does not come across like a blogger. In responding to Gawker's piece about him he expressed a level of rudeness and arrogance you rarely see in the blogosphere. But, on the other hand, Gawker's piece, "Is the Media Bloggers Association a Scam?" had done a pretty good exposé on him! He also does not do the usual thing of citing and linking in a friendly way to other blogs, but seems to only talk about himself. And though he mentions how other blogs talk about him, he does not often link to the stories. I was pretty amazed why this would make any blogger want him as their representative.

3. His sympathies appear to be all with the traditional news media. He says nicer things about AP than about other blogs.

In fact, Making Light has taken a pretty close look at Cox's background and turned up some rather unpleasant facts, including Cox doctoring his wikipedia entry by claiming credit for someone else's story, being behind right-wing sites attacking every liberal blog in election campaigns, spamming blogs that give him negative coverage, and, worst of all, having existing business links to AP...

In a way, I ended up almost respecting Cox's chutzpah, except that I think it looks more like bullying - or joining the bullies in this case. The many news outlets taking the AP / Media Bloggers Association negotiation at face value are starting to look out of their depth as this story refuses to die. AP certainly seems to be trying to kill it, and leaving the Drudge Retort well alone, but I have the feeling there is more to come...

AP has found itself the subject of a lot of online criticism in the last few days after serving a cease and desist notice against Drudge Retort - for using quotations from A.P. articles ranging from 39 to 79 words. The Drudge Retort is a liberal, left-wing alternative to the Drudge Report that famouslycreated its own firestorm by publishing, at the Clinton camp's suggestion, pictures of Barack Obama wearing tribal regalia in Somalia to undermine his homeland credentials.

Traditional newswire services like AP have a long history of enforcing protection against being copied by other newspapers without receiving a fee or an acknowledgment, as Bernhard Warner, an ex-newswire journalist reports sympathetically in the Times Online. But the troubling part of the AP’s logic is that, as Warner suggests:

bloggers aren’t the enemy. They have the power to help the wires win this credibility battle. A referral from an influential blogger can be a traffic bonanza for a news wire and its news clients. And, more importantly, a few well-crafted words from a blogger can succeed in elevating the brand name of AP or Reuters (or now Thomson Reuters) into the everyday news discussion that happens on vibrant news forums such as Drudge Retort. The mainstream press would never allow the news wire to get top billing.

But the legal department, always looking for a way of protecting copyright , may have thought they saw a good chance here. This time, though, AP have not just been caught picking on the small guy, which makes them look mean, but they have been found out for exagerating their own news, and going against their own fair use guidelines.

1. Exaggeration
The Drudge Retort has, understandably, tried to respond by arranging talks with AP through a previously little known group the Media Bloggers Association. AP is representing this as genuine dialog and a chance to draw up guidelines for "fair use" for bloggers everywhere but as no-one seems to know who this group is, as Mike Masnic of TechDirt points out, this is a bit exaggerated.

2. Breaking their own guidelines.
The main problem, though, is that AP now has no credibility left with bloggers, as it doesn't practice what it preaches, as the organization itself lifts big chunks from blogs without paying a cent for them, as this story from just last week shows.

Arrogance against blogs doesn't work, because blogs operate in a meritocracy. They get read by publishing interesting pieces on subjects people want to read about. Where that differs from journalism is not that clear to me. Journalists earn more but have less freedom, but that's hardly a useful distinction. Journalists face issues of copyright and defamation, which their editors and lawyers are quick to point out. But blog etiquette - and instant responses to blogs that break it - do a pretty good job here, too. Sure, there are poor blogs, but there is also poor journalism. And there are ways to respond to poor blogging practices.

Getting the legal department involved is like calling the the police when a kid eats an apple off your tree - they'll probably end up breaking your window, too, next time. Blogs are here to stay, and they are generally friendly. Moral of this story is, once again: If you are nice they will pay you back with interest; if you are tough, they will pay you back with interest.

Robin Goad, writing for Hitwise Intelligence, reports that UK Blog traffic has reached an all time high over the last three years. In the meantime, web news media have also done well, gathering more actual users, but starting from a higher baseline. I am a bit sceptical about Goad's claims that "blogs are catching up", because you can't simply compare percentages, as you can see below in Hitwise's own graph.



Interestingly, the Guardian newspaper and the BBC have two of the most popular blogs - both of them have impressed me by being entertaining and keeping clear of the editorial line of the main site, something which I think is essential for such blogs, but which many don't quite manage.

Obama has made almost perfect use of Web 2.0 to build his campaign - and generate income at a speed that has amazed most observers, and shocked all his rivals. I think people writing about PR on the web may use his campaign to show exactly when Web 2.0 came of age, and for many years quote it as a textbook example of building community support by

• Offering unique appeal to core supporters
• Encouraging them to build communities
• Using - or enabling others to use - every possible medium to spread the message

The Amazing Money Machine by Joshua Green in The Atlantic gives a detailed analysis of just how effectively all this has been done. Green "opted to undergo the full tech immersion while reporting this piece, and soon had Obama ring tones on my phone, new networks of online “friends,” text-message updates from the campaign, and regular e-mails
from its manager, all gently encouraging me to give money, volunteer time, bring in new friends, and generally reorient my life in ways that were made to seem hip and fun".

For me, there are two key points. First, Obama understood the influence of the web at the right time - and knew where to find the people who can wield it, and how to appeal to them. He is proposing the kind of legislation to appeal to Silicon Valley, and has made himself available. The result has been powerful affinity groups like entrepreneursforobama.com and social networking and campaign focus sites such as my.barackobama.com doing all the hard work, and doing it much more effectively than a central organization.

The second point is that he does not seem to be acting a part. Being new, young, and intelligent appeals to web users and entrepreneurs, be he also seems to be sympathetic to the ideals of the web - openness and resistance to manipulation. That has also meant letting the thing roll rather than trying to control it too much, which would probably have killed it.

Like Apple, Obama "got it" at just the right time. Like Apple, Obama has had a lot of negative press on the web, but had built a strong enough core following and "cool factor" to achieve critical mass by then. I am sure people will try to paint Hillary as akin to Microsoft, (predictably, but very amusingly, including Fake Steve Jobs), and perhaps with some justification as someone who got it a bit too late - and not quite as well.